Video shot by Tasha Carter-Gordon
Since you already know about The Terror Time from this post, and our visit to Mont Saint Michel from this post, in sharing this video we wanted to take a moment to ask: how are you doing in these crazy times?
The four of us are hanging in there. It’s been really hard to be separated from each other for so long when we thought we’d be spending this spring touring, performing, working up new repertoire, and beginning to record our next album. However, the silver lining of being stuck at home has been that we have had time (SO much time) to explore all the things that aren’t touring!
As you probably know, we did a whole bunch of livestream events, which was really exciting for us and opens up lots of future possibilities for performing for geographically dispersed audiences, during a pandemic or not! You can see all our livestreams here if you missed them or want to re-watch a favorite.
In non-Windborne news, Jeremy became one of the newest members of the Country Dance and Song Society (CDSS) Board and has been on many a Zoom call for various meetings and trainings in the past few weeks. He’s excited about working on several committees: Camp Strategic Planning; Fund Development; and Education! He’s also working for Village Harmony and helping them redesign their summer singing camps to an online format this year.
Lynn and Will have been hard at work gardening and homesteading with their housemates! They have been focusing everything through a lens of permaculture–providing for human needs in a regenerative rather than extractive manner. They’ve built a kind of garden bed called Hugelkultur, which involves putting organic materials under the soil to help renew nutrients, and they laid out their gardens in an arch design to maximize the amount of planting space in a smaller area, which reduces the impact of growing and harvesting on the soil.
Hugelkultur beds around the (already existing) plum tree named Stanley
They’ve also just acquired bees! Bees will provide a yield of honey for their household, while also introducing an animal that will benefit all the flowering plant life within 2 miles through pollination!
Bees at the hive entrance (notice the full pollen baskets on the one going in!)
Lauren has been holding down the admin fort for Windborne, cooking and baking a lot, and has gotten really into making collage postcards. If you’ve enjoyed any cat content that Windborne has posted recently on social media, that was probably also Lauren’s doing. She has been taking so many photos and videos of the cats.
One of Lauren’s recent collage postcards
We were excited to have a little virtual time together last week in an online baking class where we learned to make macarons from our dear friend and Windborne fan, Chef T! He was a finalist on the Canadian Food Network show The Great Chocolate Showdown and he was also in Lauren’s class at circus school (which is not related to his baking skills). The video of the livestream baking class is still available here (as of now… we’re not sure if it will stay up permanently) if you want to bake along! Skip forward to about 7:25 for when the class actually starts, but T does give Windborne a shoutout in the pre-class chatter! This photo tells you what you’ll need to have on hand to make macarons, and below are Windborne’s finished products!
From Lauren and Jeremy, cardamom macarons with Earl Grey chocolate ganache (center) and almond buttercream (outside)
From Lynn and Will: Almond macarons with a raspberry buttercream
Finally, we are in the process of finalizing the release of a collaborative music and video project with Zoe Mulford, so keep an eye out for that!
Please tell us: what have you been up to? We’d love to hear about your exploits, big or small, in the past weeks and months. Now, more than ever, we are so grateful for the support from you, our Patreon community. You have provided both a financial and artistic lifeline during this time when it has been all to easy to feel totally adrift. Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts.
In song and solidarity,
Lauren, Lynn, Jeremy, and Will
